64pc of participating EMEA organisations anticipate an attack in the next year, with 44pc having already experienced an incident over the past 12 months.

According to new research carried out by ESET in the SMB Cyber Readiness Index 2026, “businesses are losing sleep over a high-tech threat that has barely shown up in real attacks”, in a landscape where “everyday scams” are getting through and costing money. 

ESET, which is a Slovakia-based global cybersecurity company, partnered with Esomar member Go4insight to collect data from 4,400 organisations with 25 to 1,000 endpoints across 13 countries.

This included Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US. Contributors were the main decision-makers on, or key influencers of, organisational cybersecurity decisions. 

What was discovered in the research is that 64pc of participating organisations dispersed across Europe, the Middle East and Africa anticipate an attack in the next year, with 44pc having already experienced an incident over the past 12 months.

31pc are of the opinion that the single greatest threat is AI-powered malware, despite ESET’s findings stating that across its managed detection and response service (MDR), not one incident involved generative AI “in any meaningful way”. Rather, among the threats that posed the most risk, were phishing (27pc), unpatched software (23pc), lack of security monitoring (20pc) and weak passwords (20pc).

Commenting on the report, Michal Jankech, the vice-president of enterprise, SMB and MSP at ESET, said: “While 78pc of SMBs recognise cybersecurity’s strategic importance, inconsistent understanding of key threats, technology and terminology, including MDR and security posture, suggests there is still room for improvement. Any improvement will have to start with a reality check. 

“We’ve found SMBs’ concerns are often shaped by headlines on emerging threats like AI-driven attacks, while more routine risks, phishing, unpatched vulnerabilities and lack of monitoring, are underestimated. This hints that many respondents misperceive their security posture and resilience.” 

Invest in safety

ESET’s research also highlighted the need and desire for significant training among participating EMEA organisations.

87pc explained that they believe training to be either critical or important and 51pc train several times a year, while 12pc train monthly. Only 43pc however, were found to be using quality training programmes such as phishing simulations.

Meanwhile, 83pc view their cybersecurity budget as being sufficient or more than sufficient and 39pc expect a budget increase next year. 

Of the future investment into their organisation, 40pc are planning for increased engagement in employee training and awareness, 33pc have a future strategy for cloud security and one-quarter intend to invest in backup and recovery. The main barriers are currently budget limits (26pc), complexity and integration challenges (20pc), and a shortage in talent and skills (18pc).

“As it stands, meeting cybersecurity challenges in 2026 means understanding the intersection of your business needs, human behaviour, the democratisation of powerful technologies like AI, regulatory priorities, and the rather volatile threat landscape – that’s a lot,” said Jankech. “Therefore, to face all of these, there is but one choice – to become more resilient, starting with charting one’s own state of readiness.”

Though Ireland-based organisations were not included in ESET’s survey, George Foley – a cybersecurity specialist for ESET Ireland – offered his opinion as to what Irish organisations should expect. 

“Irish businesses are bracing for a Hollywood version of cybercrime while the side door is left wide open,” he said. “The attack that empties your account is not some self-driving AI super-virus. It is the same dodgy invoice email we have warned about for years, except now it is word-perfect and there are thousands of them. 

“Spend your worry and your budget on the basics. Train your staff to pause before they pay, keep your systems patched and stop reusing passwords. That is what stops the money walking out the door.”

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Updated, 5.31pm, 9 June 2026: This article was amended to fix some statistical errors.

• Merch on Demand taps into Alexa for Shopping for new AI-generated designs
• Consumer-targeted upgrade works on the app or website, available with Prime shipping
• Only US customers will get it for now – Etsy and others could suffer

Amazon has launched a new feature within Alexa for Shopping that enables customers to generate their own merch designs from AI prompts, which they can then have printed on physical products like hoodies and T-shirts.

Senior Editor Jacquelyn Smith said in an announcement that users may wish to print “a group chat’s funniest inside joke… shirts for an upcoming family reunion… [or] a beloved pet reimagined as a cartoon,” implying the new feature is designed primarily for consumer markets.

The FIFA World Cup starts in just two days – and if you’re preparing to travel to the US, Canada, and Mexico for the games, you’ll want the best World Cup eSIM deals covering all three host countries.

I’m expecting plenty more providers to offer deals for international football fans flying to the US and beyond. The final whistle blows on this year’s tournament in New York on July 19, and I’ll be here throughout highlighting the all the World Cup eSIM deals I can find (well, when I’m not watching the matches anyway).

We’ve tested all the best eSIMs for international travel, and they’re a great way to stay in touch your friends, family, and other fans while traveling without worrying about unpredictable data and roaming charges, or having to switch between physical SIM cards. And if you’re not traveling to the US, Canada, or Mexico to support your team, you can check out the full fixtures list and where to stream the games with our World Cup 2026 Match Finder.

World Cup 2026 eSIM deals: FAQs

When does this year’s World Cup start and end?

Are the World Cup eSIM deals available for all countries/regions?

How can I check if my phone supports eSIM technology?

We’ve explored how to check if your phone supports eSIM.

On iPhone, follow these steps:

• Go to Settings >General>About
• Look for “Digital SIM” or “eSIM”
• If you see “Digital SIM”, “eSIM”, or an EID number, your device supports eSIM
• Then check if your phone is unlocked
• Go to Settings>General>About>Carrier Lock
• If it says “no SIM restrictions”, your iPhone is unlocked and ready for an eSIM

For Android devices, the method can vary depending on the phone and operating system, but the general steps are:

• Go to Settings> Connections (or Network & Internet)
• Look for SIM options
• Tap SIM Manager, Mobile Network, or SIM Cards depending on your phone
• Search for “eSIM”, “Add eSIM”, or “Download SIM”
• If you see “Add eSIM”, “Add mobile plan”, or “Download SIM”, your device supports eSIM
• Make sure your device is unlocked
• In Settings>About phone>Status, look for information on carrier lock

How do I set up and activate the eSIM on my device?

Early Prime Day savings are in effect on Amazon’s Eero Max 7 Mesh Wi-Fi system, matching the lowest price on record.

Prime members can take advantage of Prime deals on Amazon’s Eero Max 7 Mesh Wi-Fi system, with prices starting at $419.99. This matches the lowest price on record for Amazon’s latest model, which supports wired speeds of up to 9.4 Gbps and wireless speeds of up to 4.3 Gbps.

Buy Eero Max 7 for $419.99

In our hands-on Eero Max 7 review, the mesh router earned a solid 4 stars out 5, with the MSRP being a little high in our opinion. But with today’s 30% discount, the Eero Max 7 is a worthy buy.

You can save 30% on the single pack, 2-pack, and 3-pack, so if you have an abundance of square footage to cover, the system can support up to 7,500 square feet with the 3-pack.

Early Prime Day deals are in effect on Apple devices as well, with the Apple Watch Series 11 on sale for $299 and AirPods Max 2 marked down to $499.

Anthropic is bringing its most powerful AI model to the general public for the first time, but it’s doing it with guardrails. 

On Tuesday, the AI firm launched Claude Fable 5, the first publicly available version of its Mythos model. Anthropic says Fable 5 excels at software engineering, knowledge work, and vision, but it comes with hard safety limits. In high-risk areas like cybersecurity, biology, chemistry, and distillation, the model blocks responses and falls back to Claude Opus 4.8.

Launched as a preview in April, Mythos was initially limited to a handful of partners due to cybersecurity concerns. Last week, Anthropic expanded access to hundreds of organizations across 15 countries, again focusing on organizations that manage critical infrastructure.

Now, a version of that technology is available to anyone through Anthropic’s Claude API and consumption-based Enterprise plans. Access on subscriptions will roll out in stages: through June 22, Fable 5 is be included in Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans at no extra cost. On June 23, Anthropic will pull Fable 5 from those plans, requiring usage credits going forward, with plans to restore it as a standard subscription feature as soon as possible.

Anthropic is also deploying a new version of Mythos, called Mythos 5, to organizations that have already been approved to access the advanced model.

Fable’s launch comes as Anthropic prepares to enter the public markets, alongside OpenAI and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. It also follows the AI firm’s plea urging major global AI labs to establish a coordinated brake pedal on frontier AI development. Anthropic warned that systems are advancing so rapidly that they may soon achieve recursive self-improvement (RSI), autonomously improving themselves without human intervention. 

Wary of what a Mythos-class model could do in the wrong hands, Anthropic says it stress-tested its classifiers with jailbreak attempts before releasing Fable 5. 

“Internally, we ran an external bug bounty that produced no universal jailbreaks in over 1,000 hours of testing. We then worked with external red-teaming orgs which also failed to find universal jailbreaks.”

That said, there could still be novel attacks remain possible. As a result, with the launch of Fable 5 and Mythos 5, Anthropic said it will require a 30-day retention on all traffic, even if enterprises previously had zero-retention agreements. Anthropic said it won’t use the data for training, only to “defend against complex and novel attacks, including new jailbreaks,” and “identify and reduce false positives.” The policy could set an industry precedent in which access to increasingly powerful models comes with mandatory data retention policies framed as a safety measure.

For those that continue to use the model, not every question will get a Fable 5 answer. Anthropic says the cases in which Fable has to defer to Opus 4.8 are rare, with early data showing at least 95% of Fable sessions running entirely on the model’s own responses. 

In third-party testing, analytics company Hex said in a statement that Fable was the first to get a 90% on its core analytics benchmark of complex, long-running analytical tasks. 

“On the hardest questions, it shows strong judgement and attention to nuance,” Hex said.

Vibe-coding platform Base44 noted in a statement that Fable is better at “one-shotting full apps” and has excellent tool-calling. AI-powered workspace and agent platform Genspark said Fable beat every other model in its evaluations, and performed significantly better on tasks like UI design and game coding. 

Pricing for both Fable 5 and Mythos 5 is $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, double the price of Opus 4.8. That price alone might serve as a deterrent for widespread use.

Many enterprises are growing critical of AI costs after seeing the bills come in or blowing through their yearly AI budgets early. Advanced models like Opus 4.8 can exacerbate those issues, with advanced reasoning skills that can split a single request into multiple tasks.

Anthropic said it expects demand for Fable 5 to be very high and difficult to predict. And indeed some, like shopping rewards platform Rakuten, might think the upside is worth the price point. 

“At the highest effort, Fable reflects on and validates its own work,” Rakuten said in a statement. “For us, that’s what makes highly autonomous operations possible — the extra thinking pays for itself.”

from the I-can-most-definitely-do-that,-Dave dept

So last week we noted how Meta’s AI support assistant doled out access to high-profile Instagram accounts after hackers simply asked for it. Outside of using a VPN to match the account holder’s region, the hackers didn’t have to do literally anything of note to convince the Meta AI chatbot to provide access, suggesting like so many AI offerings, Meta incompetently rushed undercooked software to market.

Meta has subsequently confirmed the issues and outlined the full scope of the problem. In a data breach notice filed with Maine’s attorney general’s office late on Friday and noticed by Techcrunch, Meta notified at least 20,225 people that their accounts had been compromised, including 30 people in Maine.

“The compromises allowed the hackers to take over the person’s entire Instagram and any linked accounts, including obtaining contact information, dates of birth, and profile information, as well as the ability to access the person’s posts, direct messages, and account activity, the notice reads.” 

Meta’s notice confirmed the problem began with “a vulnerability in an AI-assisted account recovery system for Instagram,” that was exploited to “perform password resets on Instagram user accounts.” Fortunately, the “trick” didn’t work if users had two-factor authentication enabled.

The company also claims it’s “unaware” of specifically what information was compromised during the three-week long hacking spree. Which is to say that, as with so many security breaches, the full scope of this could be worse than what’s been revealed.

Meta/Facebook is, so we’re clear, a company with 70,000 employees and a $1.57 trillion market cap. That they rushed an AI support chatbot into widespread service across roughly 3 billion active Instagram accounts is just a stunning level of incompetence.

As we saw with a different massive AI-related fuck up by Google last week (where all search queries were interpreted as AI prompts across the entire company’s search system), these companies are apparently in such a rush to justify their massive, lopsided AI spending that they’ve forgotten to do basic development testing and quality control.

Filed Under: account recovery, ai, automation, chatbot, development, hackers, llm, password reset, privacy, security, software

Companies: meta

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort features 12 activities and it’s coming to Switch 2 on October 22.

The Premium model follows in late 2026 at $53,990. Same 87.9-kilo-watt-hour battery, same 330-mile range, but with 450 hp, 537 pound-foot of torque, and a 4.6-second zero-to-60 time. Still dual-motor AWD. Then the Standard Long Range model lands in early 2027 at $48,490 with a single-motor rear-wheel drive, 350 hp, and zero-to-60 in 5.9 seconds. Rivian estimates up to 345 miles on a single charge, which indeed makes it the farthest in the lineup, but only by 15 miles.

That all-important Standard model with the attractive $45,000 price ($10,000 less than a base Volvo EX40, and $5,000 less than Tesla Model Y Premium AWD) comes last, in late 2027, with a drop in range to about 275 miles. All four trims have a native North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector with access to Tesla’s Supercharger network and a claimed 10-to-80-percent charge time of 29 minutes.

But here’s the trouble: The initial R2s will not be technically as good as the models coming six months later or so. Why? Rivian’s new, fancy RAP1 processor, a custom 5-nanometer chip delivering 1,600 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) that powers its coming Gen 3 autonomy, won’t ship on R2 models until late 2026. The EVs also won’t have lidar initially. So this crucially means early R2 adopters get Gen 2 hardware, not Gen 3. L2+ autonomy, not L3.

Now, Rivian is at pains to underline here that the Gen 2 Performance R2 will supposedly be capable of point-to-point driving later this year—but would you want that or rather wait a few months for the Level 3 Gen 3s packing “the most powerful combination of sensors and inference compute in consumer vehicles in North America,” according to Rivian’s senior vice president of electrical hardware? I know what I’d do. I also know what Rivian wants you to do: Ignore this bothersome fact and just hand over the much-needed cash, please. Those sales targets aren’t going to hit themselves.

Better Than Big Brother

Delays in Gen 3 hardware aside, Rivian has sprinkled more than a little magic dust over its R2. The Performance version actually bests the base R1S on power and range, despite that significantly lower price. Yes, the R1S has more space (three rows), and its air suspension can lift it to nearly 15 inches of clearance, as well as level the EV on sloped ground (the R2’s 9.6 inches is fixed), but in almost every other area, the R2 makes a harder argument for the R1S to answer.

Over a couple of days outside Salt Lake City, Utah, I joined a brand-hosted media drive (Rivian paid for WIRED’s travel expenses) and tried out the R2 on highways, mountain roads, and over some moderate off-road terrain.

The very good news is that much of what made the R1 such a hit with critics has been either retained, modified, or adapted here on the R2. The exterior design, for example, immediately mirrors its bigger brother but is cleverly not merely a shrunken version of that EV. The team has managed to reduce size to a length of 185.9 inches while keeping key proportions, so you get a five-seat SUV that is unmistakably Rivian but in no way feels diminutive or austere compared to the seven-seater.